Butterfly
by sapphire-child
Summary: She used to have black hair, black clothes, black everything. Claire reminisces on her gothic years with Charlie, late S3.


**Title:** Butterfly  
**Rating:** PG  
**Character/s:** Claire, Charlie, mentions of Lindsey and Thomas  
**Spoilers:** set between Par Avion and One Of Us  
Original Post Date: 01/04/2008  
**Summary:** She used to have black hair, black clothes, black everything. Claire reminisces on her gothic years with Charlie. Written for lostsquee's season 4 hiatus challenge day 1.  
**Prompt:** "I thought if I acted like someone else, I'd feel more comfortable with myself."  
**Disclaimer:** I promise I'm only borrowing Charlie and Claire! Darlton and co. can have them back very soon.

* * *

While most of her peers were bopping along to Britney Spears or trying to copy the smooth new moves from whatever boy band happened to be big, Claire Littleton was perusing record stores for Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails and Tool albums. While other girls painted their carefully manicured nails various lurid shades of pink, she painted hers black. Everything about her was black – her hair, her clothes, her shoes, her bedroom…

"Why do you _dress_ like that?" Aunt Lindsey asked her one day, disgusted. "It does nothing for your figure – you look awful, like a stick. And you've got such nice hair – I just don't understand why you'd dye it that awful colour!"

"Because I _like_ it," Claire would say stubbornly and then spend an hour blow drying it until it was dead straight, Metallica blasting through the bathroom door from the speakers in her bedroom across the hallway.

By the time she was twenty though, she'd gotten sick of the constant root touch ups, sick of the repetitive songs that her favourite bands were now churning out, sick of the shapeless clothes that she had favoured for so long. After so many years of being nothing but skin and bones, she finally had breasts and the beginning of what might one day become hips and despite herself, she wanted to show them off a little.

That was when she bleached her hair back to blonde and finally started wearing colour again. She quit her job at the piercing parlour and applied at the Fish and Fry and everyone commented on how much happier and brighter she seemed. The only remnants of her days as a rebellious teen were the leather cuffs and bracelets she still favoured.

She met Thomas two months later at a party. They danced together to an old pop song by…Jamiroquai? She remembered the song from when she was still at school but she could never place the singer. Thomas said that her hair was beautiful and he twirled one of her soft curls gently around his fingers as he smiled at her. Claire decided that she quite liked being blonde again.

Charlie was notably shocked when she mentioned offhandedly one afternoon that she had been into heavy metal when she was in her teens.

"You?" he repeated dubiously. "A metal fan?"

"It might be hard to believe but yes I was," when Charlie continued to stare at her, mouth agape, Claire laughed and explained. "When I was seventeen I dyed my hair black and started listening to Korn – my mum just about had a fit."

Charlie shook his head in disbelief. "You had _black_ hair?"

"I did," Claire smiled grimly. "I had black _everything_."

"I can't even imagine you with black hair," Charlie shook his head again, still staring at her like she'd grown another head. "Do you have any photos?"

"Back home I might have one or two," Claire winced. "I think my Aunt's got most of my old photos at her place but I didn't really like having my picture taken when I was a teenager. It obviously wasn't 'cool' or something."

"Why on earth did you do it?" Charlie asked, still shaking his head, his brow furrowed. "I mean you must've had a reason for wanting to make such a big change right?"

"I think was just sick of being labelled as the cute little blonde girl you know?" Claire rolled her eyes and Charlie hid a grin. "I was pretty shy when I was little so my mum used to just pick out all my clothes. I really grew to hate ruffles in the end. And then I had this job at a piercing parlour and I didn't really fit in there with all the punks and Goths and stuff, so I decided that I'd do something different for a change. I went and bought the bottle of hair dye and I slept over my friend Rachel's house and she helped me put it in."

"What'd your mum say?"

Claire chuckled reminiscently. "She didn't _say_ anything. At least not at first. She just kind of gave this horrified gasp and then had to leave the room. We had this huge fight over it but of course that just made me even more stubborn about keeping it that way."

"Sounds a bit like the first time I painted my nails," Charlie said reminiscently. "My dad threatened to kick me out of the house unless I took it off. I had to use a pair of nail scissors to scrape it all off because we had no acetone."

The two of them chuckled quietly together for a moment but then Claire sobered slightly.

"I guess neither of us really turned out the way our parents wanted huh?" she said, jigging Aaron in her arms.

"Probably not," Charlie agreed, tickling Aaron gently and then glancing up at Claire with softly smiling eyes. "But I think we've both turned out pretty okay anyway."


End file.
